To indicate the lengths of impertinence and bad faith reached by makers of chronicles, it remains to say that Platina[220]—that maliciously naïve echo of all Roman pasquinades—affirms that the tomb of Sylvester II itself turned sorcerer, weeping prophetically at the approaching downfall of each pope and that the reprobate bones of Gerbert shook and rattled together when one of them was about to die. An epitaph engraved on the tomb lends colour to these wonders—so adds unblushingly the librarian of Sixtus IV. Such are the proofs which pass among historians as sufficient to certify the existence of a curious historical document. Platina was librarian of the Vatican; he wrote his history of the popes by order of Sixtus IV; he wrote also at Rome, where nothing could be easier than to verify the truth or falsehood of such an assertion, which notwithstanding the pretended epitaph never existed outside the imagination of the authors from whom Platina borrowed with incredible lack of caution[221]—a circumstance which moves justly the indignation of honest Naudé, whose further remarks shall follow: “It is a pure imposture and manifest falsehood, both in respect of the experience—being the pretended prodigies at the tomb of Sylvester II—the same having never been witnessed by anyone—and of the alleged inscription on the tomb, that inscription—as it exists really—having been composed by Sergius IV and so far from supporting the supposed magical fables, is, on the contrary, one of the most excellent testimonies that could be desired to the good life and integrity of Sylvester. It is truly a shameful thing that so many catholics should be abettors of a slander concerning which Marianus Scotus, Glaber, Ditmare, Helgandus, Lambert and Herman Contract, who were his contemporaries, make no mention.” Proceeding now to the Grimoire of Honorius, it is to the third bearer of that name, or to one of the most zealous pontiffs of the 13th century, that this impious book is attributed. Assuredly Honorius III was eminently likely to be hated by sectarians and necromancers, and well might they seek to dishonour him by representing him as their accomplice. Censius Savelli, crowned pope in 1216, confirmed that Order of Saint Dominic which proved so formidable to Albigensians and Vaudois—those children of Manicheans and sorcerers. He established also the Franciscans and Carmelites, preached a crusade, governed the Church wisely and left many decretals. To charge with Black Magic a pope so eminently catholic[222] is to cast similar suspicion on the great religious orders which he instituted, and the devil thereby could scarcely fail to profit.